I saw in the subscription message to this list that I should introduce myself, so here goes. I'm a Ph.D. student in engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder (U.S.A.), and I've never been interested in astronomy in the least. However, I recently discovered heavens-above.com via a link in Make magazine, and spotted an Iridium flare and several satellites, and I'm hooked. Tonight I saw three satellites and three meteors in the 10 minutes I went out to view. I realize that's probably not normal for naked-eye viewing, but wow! On Aug 6 approx. 09:24 UTC I saw what seemed to me to be a satellite decay starting approx. overhead and arcing to the horizon almost due south. Anyone know if there was a decay then? I'm fairly new at this, so I'm not really sure the difference between a satellite decay and a meteor. This was much, much slower than the meteors I usually see, and it had a long tail with orange sparkles. Absolutely beautiful. I've noticed that the information on this hobby is scattered far and wide, so if anyone is willing to answer newbie questions for me please respond off-list. I learn extremely fast, and I'm working through the obvious documentation like the list FAQ and references from it. I'm fascinated by the idea of tracking classified satellites as well, although I realize that's probably jumping the gun a bit and requires a lot more patience and gear than I have now (which is none). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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